I found Hill Top Cafe and gave it a try last Saturday. I screwed up and tried the chicken fried sirloin. It was nothing special. The meat was OK but any flavor it had was overwhelmed by the gravy. The crust was so light and flaky it felt almost like it was made of phylo dough. Under the gravy it disintegrated so it was obviously too light for that application. After a minute instead of having cream gravy on top of a crust, I had cream-gravy based crust soup.

It was accompanied by okra, which I can't stand, in a tomato-based sauce, and potatoes that were cooked in some kind of herb mix. Judging from the color the potatoes were done with some kind of curry mix, but the taste was so mild I couldn't be sure. Overall, an entirely bland meal.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, loved what she got - oxtail soup. She said that it was some of the best she had ever had and that if it had been just a tiny bit less sweet, it would have been the best. She was also very favorably impressed with the cleanliness of the kitchen and the bathroom.

We're willing to give it at least one more try, to see how they hold up when things are busy. Since we were there on a Saturday afternoon the place was mostly empty. It may prove to be a viable choice on days when we're in F'burg for something else, but I certainly would never dream of driving 2 hours for it by itself.

Hill Top Cafe on 87 - that was it. Once you reminded me I was able to Google it.

I didn't remember a single thing about it or how I heard about it. It was derned annoying - there was something buzzing around in my head about it but I could not come up with even one bit of information. Must have had temporary brain damage.

I have to be in Fredricksburg this weekend, and want to try a place I've heard of. But now I can't remember the name. There's a place that is supposed to be pretty good on Hiway 87 west of town. Or is it Hiway 290? Anyway, if anyone can think of the name, I'd much appreciate hearing it.

I've never eaten at La Condesa, but I know that brunch at Green Pastures can't be beaten in this hemisphere. Great food and LOTS of it, and a really wonderful setting in an old house that looks like something out of Gone With The Wind.

For a different take on brunch, try Vespaio Enoteca. They have fantastic food. And, for people who may have gluten-related allergies, they have lots of dishes that do not include wheat.

For great barbeque at lunch, you could stop in Lockhart and hit either Smitty's or Black's. The one time I ever ate in the Luling City Market, I was not impressed.

I agree that Simplicity is a great place. I went there for the first time last evening. They have a very good list of wines by the glass, all from 5-7 dollars. No really big name vintages, but a nicely balanced selection and all very drinkable.

Only bad stuff I noticed was the light. If you go there before sundown, sit way back in the back or be prepared to sweat. The late evening sun comes *straight* in the glass front so the front half of the place becomes a serious greenhouse.

It was surprisingly quiet for a place with no carpet and not a speck of sound-deadening material. They must have a fantastic white noise system.

I tried the bacon-wrapped hearts of palm and the pork satay.

5 palm hearts each wrapped in a full piece of smoked bacon, and a little bowl of garlic aioli. They were fantastic. But they were so piping hot I almost blistered my mouth on the first. If you order these, force yourself to give them a few minutes to cool.

The satay was two skewers with half a dozen grilled pork chunks each. It was not quite as good as the palm but it was still good food. Not comparable to the pinchitos at Fino, but good quality meat, flavorful and cooked right, done all the way through with just a touch of grill char. The peanut sauce that came with them was a little milder than what I've had at other places, but not mild enough to be a problem. If they can do something to kick up this dish just a little, just adding a bit of salt or pepper or maybe some lime, it would be excellent.

Both the small dishes were $5 each. The total bill for two orders of tapas and two glasses of wine was $17 and change. I think that was a GREAT deal. It's probably the most bang for your buck in town, for food as good as what I had. I've been lots of places in Austin where the fare was not as good and the bill would have been twice that or more.

I finally got around to trying Mulberry yesterday, when I needed to hide out for a while until traffic got a bit saner.

It is tiny and there's not a speck of soft material other than the napkins, which means that when it starts to get full it will be as loud as 747 taking off. Be ready for that.

I was there during happy hour and I remember them as having only 8 wines by the glass - 3 red, 3 white, and 2 sparkling. Maybe you got a different menu?

I tried the meatballs on the happy hour menu, and frankly I'll take the suppli or the polpette at Vespaio Enoteca any day. The Mulberry meatballs were a bit undercooked - pink in the middle. Maybe that was why I had some seriously painful gut rumbles later that night. They were not toothy enough for my liking; they were so soft that if I were blind I might not have been sure they were meat. And as they soaked in the sauce they got softer, until the last one was more like eating boiled oatmeal than meat. In my opinion the combination of ground beef and white wine/lemon sauce did not really work. What should have tasted like beef came out tasting like chicken picata. The cheese grated onto the meatballs was so overwhelmed by the sauce that I literally couldn't taste it at all. The smell of the sauce was so strong I could not detect any smell of meat.

On the good side, the malbec and the bread with the meatballs were GREAT. I also tried the white Bordeaux and it was pretty good.

Final note: my bill for two glasses of wine and 4 meatballs came to $30 and change. And that was at happy hour prices.

For the wineries, I'd recommend Becker (near the town of Stonewall), Sister Creek (near Sisterdale), and Spicewood Vineyards (Spicewood, naturally). I've had good luck with their products. Here's a link to a site where you can get more info: http://www.weekendwinery.com/Wineries...

You have GOT to go down to Lockhart, which is 38 miles south of Austin, and try the barbeque joints down there - Smitty's, Black's, Kreuz Market. Best in the state and maybe best in the country. In my opinion they blow the Salt Lick out of the water.

Go to Fredericksburg and spend the day hiking on Enchanted Rock to build up an appetite, then go into town and check out the Auslander restaurant - great German food.

Go down to Grey Forest, which is north of San Antonio, and go to the Grey Moss Inn. They have a wine list which is second to none. And pretty good food. http://www.grey-moss-inn.com/

OK, you gotta do the Oasis, if only for a round of drinks; the food is not memorable. It's Austin's answer to Las Vegas. It's like somebody took a Spanish hacienda, a juke box, a tikki bar, and no sense of style or taste, and smashed them all together.

For my money, the absolute best restaurant in town in Jeffrey's. Very expensive, but also I think one of the best in the state.

If you're into small plates and wine, there's a Tapas bar on 2nd street called Malaga, run by a guy from Spain. I've been in several tapas places in Dallas and Houston and Malaga is far and away the best of the bunch.

Fun bars - Maggie Mae's is good. Nice and loud and you can go up on the roof and drink and sneer down at the peasants in the street. :-)

Well, the hotel has a restaurant called "Trio" which is a contender for the title of best restaurant in town. Right next door is the Shoreline Grill, which is also very good and has the same beautiful view of the river bank out back.

"Best view" and "best food" are, other than those two, pretty much separate. Most other places you can have one or the other, not both. The Oasis and the Iguana Grill have great views of Lake Travis, but the food is average at best.

The best nachos in Austin are at the Hula Hut, which sticks out into the lake at Tom Miller Dam. It's a good place to get liquored up and watch the sunset.

Will you be here on the 4th? They put on a fireworks display over the lake by the Long Center, just a block upriver from your hotel.

My favorite bar in Austin is Peche, a place styled like a French bistro on 4th Street. They can mix any drink you've ever heard of and a LOT that you haven't. And they specialize in absinthe.

Apparently this place is determined to be unique at any cost. The menu makes it sound to me like a beautiful people place where people go so they can brag about how "special" the food is. I am already prepared to hate it. From the look of that menu I think I'd rather go to the Poodle Dog Lounge and order a pizza.

I just saw that the Saba Blue Water Cafe on 4th Street is closed. It's being made into a night club called M2. I know this place was no great shakes foodwise but they used to make a fairly decent paella, and I like the fish tank behind the bar.

It is definitely closed; place is dark and there's a "for lease" sign out front. But I have no idea what happened. I think mac8111 is right - given the location, it was probably an expense account business trip place, and that sort of traffic has pretty well dried up since the dot-bomb blowup. So why the people who run this city still have this damnable "if we build it they will come" attitude about putting up more hotels, I sure don't know.

Go south a bit to Pflugerville and try the European Bistro. It's run by a couple of little old Hungarian ladies. The goulash and the cabbage rolls are fantastic. But don't eat the cabbage rolls unless you will spend the rest of the day in the open air.

There is supposed to be a new Bavarian restaurant open in Pflugerville, but I don't know anything about it.

The Apothecary wine bar on Burnet is showing all the games. They have a fair wine list and some good food selections. It's a pleasantly dark place. If you have any allergies to glutens or wheat, this is the place to go. They have recipes that are entirely gluten and wheat free.